


Space Family

by rinskiroo



Series: A Good Space Boy From A Good Space Family [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Baby Poe, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 21:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14029383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: Shara has big news for Kes.





	Space Family

Shara didn’t know how to tell him that they weren’t quite careful enough.  They could blame it on dwindling resources—condoms aren’t exactly a priority for the Rebellion.  Though, maybe considering how life and death it all is, it should be.  Draven has sent them in to meet one of his agents—just a two person team to slip in and make contact and get back out.  They were chosen because they work well together, of course they do.  Kes is the muscle, but also the steadying hand.  Shara’s the sharp wit, if a little impulsive.

“We work well together,”  she tells him outright as they wander through the crowded market of the Imperial occupied moon.

Kes grins and barely brushes the back of his hand against the back of hers.  “’S why I married you.”

They pass a lean-to counter piled high with carved toys—tops, speeders, miniature destroyers.  Shara’s fingers idly graze against the trinkets.  If Kes catches her wandering eyes and hands, he doesn’t say anything.

Shara stands guard outside the pawn shop where Kes meets their contact.  Her eyes are keener; reflexes faster.  Kes is inside getting their information—he’s better with people.  He be smooth as shimmersilk, and also break the Teedo’s hands if he doesn’t give up what was already promised.  Not that Shara thinks he would, but he’s the sort of guy that looks like he could carry through with such a threat.

Shara knows he wouldn’t hurt a soka fly if he didn’t have to.  She thinks, as he comes out of the shop and tosses her a wink, proof of a successful mission, that he’ll make a great father.

“Look at what I got,”  he says with a flourish of his hands.  “Beer koozies!”

Shara frowns, rethinking her earlier thought.  “These are from the Jedi History Museum—pretty sure we’d get arrested just carrying these around.”

“But our beverages will be nice and cold.”  He grins, but stuffs the foam novelty items deep into his pocket anyway.

They make it back to their beat up, unassuming freighter easy as.  Take off from the moon without a second glance.  They’re on their way back to Hoth and Shara still hasn’t told him, though she knows she needs to before they get back to base.  After they get back, there will be more missions, likely apart.  She doesn’t want to tell him over a holo, and definitely doesn’t want him to show up one day and she’s already ballooned out.

Suprise, babe!  Understatement of the century.

But she knows that once she says it, it’s out there in the open.  There’s no taking it back.  Their lives will change—how he looks at her will change.  Right now, only Shara knows any better.

Late at night, hours before arriving at Echo Base, Shara can’t sleep.  She scoots closer to her husband and sticks her finger out, poking him in the arm.

Poke.  Poke.  _Poke._

His head rubs back and forth against the pillow like he’s trying to shake off the annoyance.

Another poke.

“What is it, babe?”  he asks, groggy and still mostly asleep.

“There’s something I want to tell you, but I don’t want you to freak out and get all weird.”

Kes stretches his arms out and rubs his eyes.  He rolls over and lazily drapes his arm over her shoulder.  “I’m too tired to freak out.  What’s up?”

She doesn’t know how to say it.  It’s just a small phrase, but it’ll change everything.

His eyes have drifted back shut and his breathing is evening out again, nearly nestled back into the warm embrace of sleep.

“I’m pregnant,”  she blurts it out, loud enough for her voice to wake him up if the content of what she’s saying doesn’t.

One of his eyes cracks open—confusion, maybe.  Perhaps he thinks he was dreaming.  “Like with a baby?”

“No, a womprat—yes, a baby, you big doof.”

Kes laughs and pulls her into his arms, rolling on top of her and kissing her sweetly.  “What do you think?”  he asks as he nuzzles in close.

“I’m…”  Shara stops because she’s everything all at once, somehow.  “I’m excited.  And terrified.  I can’t wait to meet him, or her, but I don’t—how can I be a mother and fight for the Rebellion?”

“General Syndulla does it, why can’t you?”

Shara scoffs.  “She teaches flight school.”

“It’s still fighting—still important.”

She sighs and wraps her arms around her husband, holds him close.  “You have to be there,”  she whispers quietly.  “I don’t want to do it alone.”  Because that’s the fear—the one thing she’s afraid of.  Not for her life, because somehow she almost feels like these pregnancy hormones have made her invincible.  Shara doesn’t think she could do it alone—the birth, or what comes after.

“I promise.”

 

Kes keeps his promise, of course, how could he not.  Shara kept flying until she couldn’t fit the harness around her abdomen.  Command put her on patrol duty, recruitment, milk runs—anything relatively safe.  There’s a planet, deep in the Mid Rim that’s off major trade routes.  As such, it avoids the worst of the Imperial spread and has remained sympathetic to the Rebellion.

It’s warm with a brilliant yellow star and blue skies with white, puffy clouds.  The sort of planet he might think of settling down on should the war ever end.  The air smells like nothing he’s ever smelled before—not engine coolant, or carbon, or prepackaged rations.  It’s clean and organic, grass and dirt and pollen that tickles his nose.

Shara’s father meets them there, but not soon enough.  Their boy is eager to greet the galaxy and arrives a week earlier than expected.

“His name’s Poe,”  Shara says after the midwife hands her a freshly cleaned and swaddled infant.  They’d had a couple different names picked out, but Kes knows she liked Poe the best.

Kes settles onto the bed next to his wife and smiles down at the baby boy.  His face is red and swollen, his eyes puffy and covered in a goopy medicine.  He’s mostly bald, except for one long, single, brown curl swirling on his forehead.  And Shara, looking exhausted, but radiant—they’re the two most beautiful things Kes thinks he’s ever seen in his life.

They stay on the planet with the sun and the clouds for several months.  Kes thinks they might stay forever.  He remembers how much fire she has for the Rebellion, how much she misses that cockpit, but a child changes things.  It’s made him stop and consider life—not just his life, but hers and Poe’s.  He thinks about the future, about nursery school and play-dates, about maybe a wedding far off in the future and grandchildren.  He knows Shara thinks about the future—he hears her tell Poe how she’s going to teach him to fly one day.  (Thinks he should have picked up a few things already considering how many missions she flew whilst pregnant.)

Maybe they’ll quietly slip away and leave the fighting to people with less to lose.

It’s the attack on Echo Base that reminds them no one will have a future if the Empire isn’t stopped.

It breaks his heart to watch Shara say goodbye to Poe.  Put him into her father’s arms and tearfully kiss his little head.  The boy pulls at the chain around her neck and his grandfather has to carefully untangle the two of them.  Kes will miss his son, terribly, like he’s leaving a piece of himself behind, but to see how it’s tearing apart his wife, he almost tells her to stay.  One pilot won’t make the difference.

“It’ll be okay,”  she tells him with a hand on his chest.  Kes thinks perhaps he’s not keeping it together quite as well as he thinks he is.

Kes swallows back and grips his wife’s fingers, but he can’t find the words.

“We’ll be together again.”

Kes believes her, because he can’t let himself imagine a future where that isn’t true.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://rinskiroo.tumblr.com/) and check out the rest of the Poe Dameron Week submissions!


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